by Eric Jude Cortes
I am an experienced public school teacher and I am a pariah. You may have seen me talked about on major 24-hour news networks. Your governor may claim that I am part of the privileged elite. Your mayor claims that I am the reason why your city is broke. Talking head after talking head claims that my pension, bargaining power, and job security should be stripped and I should be replaced with a lower-paid, easier-to-fire rookie. In spite of this, a recent international study shows that American teachers deserve more pay and more respect. As a dedicated teacher in a New York City high school, I couldn’t agree more.
In my line of duty, even before pay, what is sorely lacking is a level of respect. President Barack Obama declared that in South Korea, teachers are considered “nation builders.” I can only imagine how politicians would react if my colleagues and I started calling ourselves by that term. There is truth to the term, though. After all, my colleagues and I are responsible for a large degree of the literacy, acculturation, world view, and career skills of our charges. There is no way our country would thrive without experienced educators. In addition, personally, I am often not just a teacher, but an unofficial counselor, mentor, volunteer tutor, and yes, let’s be honest, sometimes an unofficial babysitter.
Teachers deserve higher pay. You may not hear this from politicians, but if you use the same logic that justifies paying Wall Street pencil pushers millions, you’d agree with me. The argument is, if you increase a profession’s salary, you’ll keep and attract the most qualified individual. Anti-union newsman John Stossel used this argument in a TV special about how capitalism works, arguing that it’s good to pay CEOs millions of dollars. The irony is that years later, Stossel aired a special declaring that school teachers are paid too much, and high pay doesn’t lead to more qualified teachers. This type of hypocrisy was humorously ridiculed by John Stewart in an episode of the Daily Show. Even if you listen to the anti-teacher attacks of the sappy “documentary” Waiting For Superman, the fact remains that the wealthy will always want public sector workers to be underpaid and overworked.
I could go on. There are some statistics and anecdotes that I can throw at you. I can mention that in Finland, a nation with one of the best educational systems in the world, teachers earn on average 13% less than other college graduates, as opposed to 40% less in the U.S. I’d love to regale you with stories of how much more respectful my foreign-born English language learners are than my mainstream US-born students. But it’s getting late. I have lessons to prepare, homework to grade, parents to call, papers that need to be marked, oh, and I have a family to take care of. This pariah needs a nap.
To learn more about Eric, randomly bump into him on the street and politely ask him some questions.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.
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About Eric J Cortes
I definitely agree that teacher’s deserve more pay. It’s insulting that they aren’t paid better, these are the people that are spending the MOST time with our children. They have to have the patience of saints, deal with all the bad habits you have exposed your children to and through all that attempt to teach and inspire children. They have to compete with ipods, cell phones and every other distraction available to children. However, I do believe it should be easier to get rid of teachers who are not doing their part. I have seen miserable beings in the classroom that seem to have no interest at all in sculpting the minds of children and for that they need to be fired. Get these crappy teacher’s out, raise the pay and watch the quality teachers fill the classrooms. I’m sure the low pay dissuades potentially great teachers from pursuing the career.
Brilliant. As a public school teacher, I couldn’t agree more.
Mr. Cortes, if someone called teachers a pariah, they’re ignorant and misinformed. You don’t reference a specific source so we don’t know who misinforming the public.
Having said this, I think your missing the point of the current discussion and, especially, NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s push to be able to lay off teachers based on merit rather than tenure. As I understand it, teachers cannot be fired due to union agreements, even if they are not performing adequately. The idea behind the current discussion is that teachers should be hired, fired, promoted and paid based on their skills as educators, not based on how long they’ve been teachers. Isn’t that also what you’re advocating?
Let’s look at American Airlines as an example. Over the last few years, many flight attendants were laid off. Because of their union agreements, the newest flight attendants went first, merit was not a factor. This purge left only the flight attendants who had been working the longest. The result? On Airlinequality.com, AA gets a 3.2/10 on customer reviews. Compare that to JetBlue, with a 7.5 and Southwest at 8.2.
Becoming a teacher requires a great deal more investment and time and isn’t exactly comparable to this experience with flight attendants, but, at the very least, communities should have the ability to keep and promote teachers based on merit and have the flexibility to grow and contract their workforce as financial situations dictate.
I’ll go overseas and teach the Asian kids first, where they value the words “Respect for self and others”, long before I would ever consider doing your job. Thank you tremendously for all you do!!
ps.s.—it’s also safer